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By Dave Neal

CLOUD STORAGE MAGNATE Kim Dotcom has promised to release his secure encrypted email system next year.

Dotcom's Mega mail will keep communications between users secure, he claims, and unintelligible to PRISM snoopers at the US National Security Agency (NSA).

"#Mega's open encrypted email service outside of #NSA reach will change the way people use email forever. You'll see. Coming 2014," he said on Twitter.

"Mega encrypted services will put an end to mass surveillance. Where politicians fail us & laws won't protect us, innovation will save us."

Dotcom has spoken about PRISM before, and like the search company Duckduckgo, he reckons that it has driven traffic to his secure services.

"Since the Prism story broke #Mega is growing rapidly," he said in July. "The Privacy Company is happy to serve you. Thank you for using Mega."

He has bigger plans than just storage and email, and has asked the European Commission for the nod to go ahead and try to come up with a competitor to Google.

"I ask the European Parliament to come up with an incentive program / funding for a EU search engine to compete with Google," he said.

According to Tiffiniy Cheng of the group Fight for the Future, US President Obama is attempting to demonise Snowden and draw any debate away from PRISM.

"President Obama is working overtime to keep the debate off of the NSA spying programs and focus on whether or not Edward Snowden is a spy or traitor or something else," said Cheng.

"Yet, even before the president cancelled his meeting with Putin, thousands of people were thanking Mr. Snowden for bringing the NSA's spying [programmes] into public debate. We've seen an unbelievable response already - the messages keep streaming in."

Cheng said that a Thank You webpage set up to share messages of gratitude to Snowden saw thousands of posts in its first 24 hours. µ